In his follow-up to the well-received “Eisenhower at War: 1943-1945,” David Eisenhower tells of his grandfather’s retirement years. It’s a nice combination of the political (he had major differences with 1964 GOP standard-bearer Barry Goldwater) and the personal (he was quite taken with his new TV remote). Eisenhower tells Required Reading, “Yes, Granddad was very interested in gadgets and technology, and he would have doubtlessly acquired smart phones and the like. What he would have enjoyed the most, in my opinion, would have been the ability to take and circulate digital pictures.”

The Boy: A Holocaust Story

by Dan Porat (Hill and Wang)

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the iconic Warsaw Ghetto photo this book covers — terrified young boy in cap with arms raised, Nazi solider pointing his gun just feet away — is easily worth its 262 pages. Porat, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, pursues the stories of the people in the photo: from the young woman next to the boy to the Nazis, including the photographer. And while Porat concludes the youngster died, his revelations about Ghetto residents and their murderers are compelling.

The Confession

by John Grisham (Doubleday)

The wrong man is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. What happens when the real killer wants to come clean? Just when you thought he’d covered every side of the law, bestselling author Grisham finds a new angle as the guilty man, Travis Boyette, just diagnosed with a fatal illness, races the clock to save the innocent one, Donté Drumm — four days from execution — in the writer’s 24th legal thriller.

The Great Penguin Rescue

by Dyan deNapoli (Free Press)

DeNapoli, who works at Boston’s New England Aquarium, oversaw the saving of 19,000 penguins who were caught in an oil spill off South Africa in 2000. Nearly half the world’s population of African penguins was in immediate peril, and she was among the 100 wildlife experts called to help supervise the thousands of other volunteers who needed to scrub the oil from each individual bird. It’s real-life eco-thriller — with a happy ending.

The Intelligent Entrepreneur

by Bill Murphy Jr. (Henry Holt)

Facebook isn’t the only business to have sprung from the halls of Harvard. Murphy looks at successful firms started by three Harvard Business School grads and details how they did it. One grad founded TheLadders.com, a job search and recruitment biz; another, beauty product retailer Bluemercury Inc.; and the third, Military.com, which help service members, families and veterans stay connected.